While I write this Peter is on the plane back from Austin, TX to the Netherlands. He got to visit for a week. Work in the same office as his co-workers, breakfast and lunch with a few of his friends and deliver some Dutch goodies to some others.

This past week he wrote me a text, several times, saying that it was so good to be in Austin.

He was in Austin.
The place on earth I probably wants to be most. I longed for so deeply the past few months. I missed so badly, so often. The place we use to call home.
I knew it is not our home anymore. We don’t belong there anymore.

When I read his text I was sitting on my roof terrace. Looking out over the high, beautiful, green trees. I saw purple and yellow flowers. I was breathing in the fresh spring air of the Netherlands. I heard the birds singing their songs. A train drove by.
And there in that moment the strangest thing happened. It had been in the making for months. Without realizing it, my heart had been prepared for this moment.
I read his text, about how good it was to be in Austin. The place I so dearly love. Where I collected precious memories. The city I used to call home. I once belonged.
Now all I could think and know and truly belief was this, this very roof terrace, of this very house, in this particular street, in Ede, in the Netherlands, this is were I belong. This is home.

The past few months (almost 5 already!) I have been struggling. I wanted to trust God. But I couldn’t. He gave us so much. He clearly prepared a community for us, he answered prayers. Even ones I didn’t even know we had. He prepared a place. But so often I couldn’t see it. And oh, often I didn’t want to see it. I screamed and kicked and fought.

In the midst of those days I tried. Ow, I tried so hard. I wanted to be thankful. So I spoke prayers of thankfulness in front of the kids. Especially about the things that were (are) the hardest for me to accept. I even called the kids inside one afternoon and we started baking a cake. And writing a thank you note with it for the teachers in their school.
But my heart didn’t embrace that thankfulness, not truly. While kneading the dough I felt the pain inside me, the pain of sending them to school everyday. The pain of missing the school community we had. The pain of missing the hard, but beautiful moments of homeschooling.
While hearing myself give thanks to God for all the blessing we had, the house, the dedicated and loving teachers, the neighbors, the most beautiful spring flowers I’ve seen in six years, the neighbors, the biking around, and so on, while hearing myself speak about those things, deep inside I was screaming.

I felt like I failed. I didn’t trust.

On Wednesday three of the kids were in school. I brought Yanoah to the neighbor across the street. Made myself some coffee, packed some snacks, my phone, bible and a printed sermon from years ago and headed to the haylands.
It was there on my picnic blanket, in the middle of the beauty of the Netherlands -while Yanoah was at the house of a random person I didn’t even know a few weeks ago- that I read a blogpost with the words: “We moved into a neighborhood that had clearly not gotten the memo that neighbors were supposed to be strangers.” I couldn’t help but smile. With some tears rolling down my face. Yes, we sure did move into a neighborhood were they didn’t get that memo either. And what a blessing it has been! Simply because God prepared this place for us.

I felt a little trust.

But also the stinging feeling of failing again.
Trust seemed easy now. Or at least easier. Of course I trusted now. After all I was sitting in the warmth of the sun, beautiful scenery, warm coffee within reach, time alone. No responsibility for an hour or so.

I picked up the sermon series I heard years ago. A long time ago, in a far away country I had started to read it through. Underlining here and there. So I just picked up where I had left off.

Faith, trust, belief, hope are all action words is what I read. I knew it. I had felt it so often those past few months. The lack of it that is. I knew there hadn’t been much action in that area for me lately.
You have to do something or it is just hypothetical and theoretical and it is not even real – it doesn’t count for you.
Well, clearly it didn’t count for me. I failed.

But still, I kept reading: Here is a concrete example. I am on the third story of a building and the place is burning down around me. There is a team of firefighters below me and they have that little trampoline out; they are yelling at me to ‘jump’. I am going to be saved from this burning building. So I have to jump.
Now, staying up here (on the ledge of the building) and acknowledging that the firefighters have adequate training, and they have a sufficient number of people to distribute my weight that if I jump and probably approach a speed of about 40 mph, they could catch me, that is not trust.
Intellectual understanding is not trust. Knowing something is the ability to do follow through and do something about it in the Bible.

– Do you believe we can catch you?
~ Yes.
– Then jump.
~ No, I believe you. I trust you.

What is faith? Faith sometimes is not confident but it is doing something. It is jumping.

A little something inside me started to change. I wondered did I jump?
After all, we did pack all our stuff. We boarded the plane to Amsterdam that January morning. We bought a house. We found a school for the kids. We are building our lives here.
It might not always have been confident, but did I trust?

I read a little further:
You are not trusting until you are airborne.
You can be airborne and crazy, screaming but at least you are airborne.

You can be airborne and crazy, screaming… Oh yes, I feel crazy most days. And screaming and kicking? Well, I’ve done plenty of that. Quite literally sometimes. But yes, oh yeah sure, I am airborne!

Sitting on the flat, stretched out, Dutch haylands, I realized I had been airborne all those months. I had been trusting after all.

Oh yes, I have fought it. Questioning sometimes. Screamed and kicked and felt totally crazy. But I trusted!

Realizing what trusting really is, gave me the freedom to accept. And trust even more fully.
Which God, so tender, graceful and patient as he is, gave me in this same week several other signs how he prepared a place for us here.

While I type this up Peter is airborne. Between Austin and Amsterdam.
And I trust. That it is great to be back in Austin. But that this here, where I am right now, is where we belong. So I make a home. Buy a couch. Paint a wall. Score a playscape on craigslist.

My heart fills with thankfulness. True thankfulness.
Because trusting in God fuels thankfulness. I don’t have to try to be thankful anymore. I don’t have to pull it up from my toes. It is being fueled now.

And friends, can I tell you, that gives peace.
And space. Room. Longing even. For a new prayer.
For God to show us, not just what place he has prepared for us, but also what works he has prepared for us.

Because no doubt about that one. I fully trust. There will be works. He has them laid out already.
And I trust. Although it might be crazy, screaming. Kicking even.
But I’ll trust! I’ll jump. And I’ll be airborne.

Wondering what that looks like?
I think this video shows best.